Ancient Aliens s15e08 Episode Script
The Immortality Machine
1
NARRATOR: In the Mojave Desert,
there is a structure
built to bestow
everlasting life.
BARBARA HARRIS: People
were supposed to walk in one door
and come out the other
and be healed.
NARRATOR:
And according to the architect,
it was designed
by otherworldly beings.
He could communicate
with distant ancestors
or even time travelers
coming and going from the Earth.
DAVID CHILDRESS:
They showed him the future,
and this was his destiny.
JONATHAN BERMAN:
In your wildest imagination,
you wouldn't come up with
something like the Integratron.
The dome was taking
many different scientific ideas
and melding them together.
NARRATOR: Could this
strange domed building
really provide
the key to immortality?
GIORGIO A. TSOUKALOS: If we
could figure out the Integratron, then,
for all intents and purposes,
we could live forever.
NARRATOR:
There is a doorway
in the universe.
Beyond it is
the promise of truth.
It demands
we question everything
we have ever been taught.
The evidence is all around us.
The future is
right before our eyes.
We are not alone.
We have never been alone.
Aerodynamics engineer
and inventor George Van Tassel
is in his hotel room
preparing to reveal
his latest
scientific discoveries
in a television interview
when he suddenly
and unexpectedly dies.
Friends and family members
are shocked
when it is reported that he
suffered a fatal heart attack,
since Van Tassel,
at 67 years of age,
was in perfect health
and had shown no warning signs.
His sister, Peggy Manyo,
became suspicious
when she discovered
that the body had been cremated
before she was even notified.
And perhaps most curious of all,
his wife Doris claimed that,
during her husband's funeral,
their home was ransacked
and George's papers stolen.
As soon as he passed away,
mysterious vans and trucks
showed up,
and all of his equipment
and plans and drawings
and a lot of his writings were
loaded up into these trucks
supposedly government trucks
and hauled away,
never to be seen again.
If the government found
all this stuff important enough
to show up right after he died
and haul it away,
then at least some people
within the government believed
there was something
worth studying,
something worth looking at.
NARRATOR: But what was
George Van Tassel working on
that would elicit
so much interest
from the United States
government
and even prompt family members
to speculate
that he may have been murdered?
While Van Tassel
had been working
on a number
of intriguing projects,
including an anti-gravity device,
his masterwork
was a machine he built
in the Mojave Desert
called the Integratron.
It was a machine designed
to extend life
and perhaps even lead
to immortality.
George Van Tassel often quoted
Corinthians 15:26.
"The last enemy
to be destroyed is death."
George believed
that our lifespan is too short
and, in order to get wisdom,
we should live longer.
And that was part
of his motivation
to create this machine,
to bring wisdom to people.
'Cause just as you're getting it
together,
boom, you die.
If you could walk through
this machine counterclockwise,
come out the other side
and be 30% younger,
what more could you do
with your life?
TSOUKALOS:
It's in the middle of nowhere.
It's incredibly flat.
And there you see
this white, round building
with a half dome on top,
and it's got these 16 sections.
MICHAEL MASTERS: The Integratron
was made in a way that
is very ideally suited
for capturing energy
and the way George Van Tassel
thought of the Integratron
as a battery charger,
a way to prolong life.
TSOUKALOS: The basic
idea behind the Integratron
was to introduce a machine,
through harmonics,
with which you
then can rejuvenate your cells.
Because
if we could figure out a way
from preventing
our individual cells
from deteriorating
or getting older,
then, for all intents
and purposes,
we could live forever.
NARRATOR:
At the time of his death,
George Van Tassel
had just announced
that the device he had
been working on for 24 years
was 95% complete
and would be fully functional
within weeks.
When his house was ransacked
during his funeral,
the core of the Integratron
and other critical components
also disappeared,
leaving no question as to what
the intruders were after.
Those papers and that equipment,
none of that
has ever been seen again.
NARRATOR:
Could this unusual structure
located in the middle
of the Mojave Desert
really hold the key
to immortality?
While it may sound far fetched,
many who have studied
the incredible story
of George Van Tassel
are convinced
that he might actually have
succeeded
in a quest for eternal life
that has endured
for thousands of years.
BERMAN: We took a bite out of
that apple in the Garden of Eden.
We had knowledge.
But the price of that knowledge
was that we were aware
of our own mortality.
And since that day,
we've been looking
for that fountain of youth,
that way to extend our lifespan
or maybe even live forever.
NARRATOR:
In 2018,
archaeologists
excavating the tomb
of a Han dynasty noble family
in Luoyang, China,
unearthed some of
the earliest evidence ever found
of human efforts to cheat death.
Recently, in an archaeological
dig in a Chinese burial chamber,
an ancient 2,000-year-old
bronze pot was recovered
with the remnants of a substance
that was later determined
was probably an elixir
of immortality.
NARRATOR:
Ancient Taoist texts confirmed
the liquid substance
to be a legendary potion
brewed by Chinese alchemists,
granting eternal youth
to those who dared drink it.
Lab results revealed
the potion is largely made up
of potassium nitrate
and alunite,
which, while not poisonous,
are used in pesticides,
fertilizers
and rocket propellants.
FISHER:
It's a powerful reminder
of the fact that humans,
probably for thousands of years,
have had this sort of desire
to-to extend our lives.
NARRATOR:
The Han dynasty elixir
is just the latest of many
ancient attempts at immortality
discovered by archaeologists
over the years.
But what drives humankind
to seek eternal life?
Is it merely self-preservation?
Or could there be
another force at work,
one that may be connected
to the fact
that every ancient culture
on Earth
described the gods as immortal?
In ancient Greek myths,
we learn of the food
of the gods,
which they called ambrosia,
an immortality food.
These beings possess some form
of a-a liquid or an elixir
that, ultimately,
somehow altered their blood
and promoted immortality.
TSOUKALOS:
Some of the stories that we hear
about this drink, ambrosia,
is when the eyewitness
is taken up into the sky.
There are actual
ancient Greek mythologies
that describe
these shiny star islands
that descended from the sky
and then,
under their own propulsion,
moved around.
The entire Greek pantheon
of gods
is based
on visiting extraterrestrials.
NARRATOR:
Is it possible
that humanity's centuries-old
quest to attain eternal life
is fueled by a desire to become
like the otherworldly beings
that our ancestors
actually encountered?
Curiously, there are a number of
stories from the ancient world
presented not as fiction
but as historical record
that describe people
of an earlier age
living
extraordinarily long lives.
In the Old Testament,
the Book of Genesis,
we learn of figures
like Noah and Methuselah
who lived for hundreds of years,
800 and 900 years.
The Bible never tells us
how they were able
to live that long.
TSOUKALOS:
There is an artifact
at the Ashmolean Museum
in Oxford, England,
that is called
the WB 44 Kings List
of ancient Sumeria.
On there,
you have a chronology of kings,
and the combined years
of when these rulers
were in charge
is 241,000 years.
And on that WB 44 list,
you have
so-called historical figures,
where you actually have
archaeology
corroborating existence
of those people.
So, in my opinion,
the WB 44 list
is a list of extraterrestrial
space travelers,
and the entire Kings List
is correct.
NARRATOR: Could it
be that George Van Tassel
and many others like him
have been driven
by a deep-seated memory
of a time
when our ancestors existed
alongside extraterrestrials
who seemed to live forever?
Perhaps the answer can be found
by examining the events
that led to the construction
of the Integratron
and George Van Tassel's
alien encounter.
NARRATOR: Standing alone
in California's
barren Mojave Desert
is a towering seven-story
boulder called Giant Rock.
It is here that George
Van Tassel's strange journey
began in the 1940s,
just three miles
from where he would
eventually build
the Integratron.
MASTERS: Giant Rock
is a 25,000-ton boulder
that takes up 5,800 square feet,
and is, until recently,
the largest freestanding boulder
in the world.
NARRATOR:
This massive boulder has
long been held sacred
by local Native American tribes,
who believe it to be
a site of great power.
HENRY: Spiritual vortexes
like Giant Rock are known
to be places
where people can have
extraordinary
spiritual experiences,
healing experiences,
deep states of meditation.
And what we find out
at Giant Rock is that the local
Native American Indian tribes,
the Serrano and the Chemehuevi,
would do their ceremonies
at Giant Rock.
But only the chief was allowed
to get close to Giant Rock.
NARRATOR:
In November of 2019,
ancient astronaut theorist
David Childress traveled
to the site of Giant Rock
to meet with local historian
Barbara Harris, and learn
more about the inception
of the Integratron.
- Hello, Barbara.
- How you doing?
Hi. Thank you for coming.
Thanks for having me here.
So, please tell me
the story of-of Giant Rock.
Well, they say it is
millions of years old.
And, uh, basically this whole
area here is made up of granite.
And, many, many years
ago there's a,
a volcanic eruption.
And, of course,
this is a product
of that volcanic eruption.
What is the early story
of, of Giant Rock, then,
with Native Americans?
Well, this ground was considered
very sacred
by the Native Americans.
And they would come here
and use it seasonally.
But they considered it
so sacred that only
the shamans and the chiefs
were allowed to stay
here at the rock.
At the turn of the 19th century,
the homesteading and
the white man
started to come in.
And that has to do with this
early prospector,
who lived under the rock.
Frank Critzer,
and he was responsible
for building the roads
to Giant Rock.
NARRATOR:
In 1930, George Van Tassel
had a chance encounter
with prospector Frank Critzer
at his uncle's auto repair
shop in Santa Monica,
which led to him investing
in Critzer's mining operations
in the Mojave Desert.
Critzer was known in the area
for his eccentric behavior,
which included using mining
dynamite to blow a hole
in the bottom of Giant Rock
one big enough to live in.
Van Tassel's initial ties
to the area stem
from a friendship forged
with Critzer over the years.
CHILDRESS:
He lived under this rock?
HARRIS:
Yes, he was actually
a guy who was looking for people
to come and visit him
under his rock.
However, Frank, he also
had a dark side to him.
So, in July of 1942,
the U. S. Government
had the Old Man's Draft.
And, and it required people
between the ages of 18 and 64
to register for the draft.
And so he got caught up
in that, did he?
- Yeah, he was 54.
- Okay.
And the-the local sheriffs
came out here, who happened
to be friends with him,
and offered to take him
into the local town
to register for the draft.
He walked into a back room
and came out
wearing a pair of binoculars
that had wires attached.
And he basically said,
"Leave me alone,
or we're all gonna
go to hell together."
And he took the two wires,
put them together and
- Right under here, then?
- Yes.
Okay, wow!
And he blew up
into little pieces.
And, uh, one sheriff actually,
one of his rib cages
came off and impaled into a
the other one.
-And the other sheriff
came flying -Wow.
- Out of the bottom of the rock.
- Yeah.
And the other sheriff,
who stood out here,
stood in shock
while it all happened.
NARRATOR:
Frank Critzer's bizarre
and violent action
shocked the local community.
Many questioned if he may
have been influenced
by the energy
of Giant Rock itself
which the local
Native American tribes
had warned was only meant
for sacred purposes.
And, according to geologists,
Giant Rock does,
in fact, produce energy.
The interior
of the rock is white,
because it is primarily
composed of quartz
a mineral that generates
an electrical charge
when under stress
as it would be
inside a massively heavy rock.
Giant Rock is also believed
to be located on top
of a natural earth energy line,
also known as a ley line.
George Van Tassel said
the Integratron needed
to be in a special place,
full of energy.
We have a gold mine
right nearby.
This area has ley lines
and aquafers.
There's actually a mountain
of quartz right here.
And you can feel the energy
when you're here.
NARRATOR:
Could electrical energy
emanating from Giant Rock
have had
a deadly effect
on Frank Critzer?
Despite the horrific event
that occurred at Giant Rock,
one man was still
drawn to the site
George Van Tassel.
Over the course of his many
visits to Critzer's rock home,
he had become convinced that it
was a place of unusual energy.
Now, you have a vacancy
under the rock!
- Van Tassel told his wife, "Pack the girls"
- Santa Monica to
"we're moving out to live
under a rock!"
So, did the Van Tassels
- live underneath this rock then?
- No, actually,
most of their living quarters
were outside.
The underground area
was primarily used
for his channeling
and meditations, so,
as the story goes,
Van Tassel had an experience.
NARRATOR:
Before his death,
Frank Critzer had transformed
the nearby ancient lake bed
into a small airport.
According to George Van Tassel,
on the night of August 24, 1953,
a craft landed on the runway
that was not of this world.
He described the encounter
in a 1964 television interview.
INTERVIEWER:
What did you see?
A bell, a bell-shaped, uh, type
of, uh, anti-gravity, uh, ship
that they operate
as a scout ship
out of their big carriers.
How big?
Uh, this was 36 feet in diameter
and 19 feet high.
And where was it, on the ground?
No, it was hovering
ten feet off the ground.
And, uh, a man got off
of the ship
and approached me.
INTERVIEWER:
Did you go into this ship?
I walked with him to a spot
underneath it,
and, uh, an anti-gravity beam
took me up
through a hole in the bottom.
NARRATOR:
While skeptics were quick
to write off George Van Tassel
as some kind of delusional
mad scientist,
many who knew him,
or have studied his work,
believe he was
nothing short of a genius.
George was super smart.
At 14, he drops out of school.
At 17, he becomes
a certified pilot.
Moves out west,
and worked for Howard Hughes
and then became friends.
They both had a calling
to, let's say, higher
or mystical
or psychic experiences.
CRAIG HODGETTS:
The parallels would be Edison,
who thought in this
realm of electricity
that nobody could understand,
but he somehow channeled.
Or Nikola Tesla.
He was so sensitized to
the electromagnetic spectrum
that many of his inventions
just came naturally.
And that may have been
some place where
George Van Tassel came from.
NARRATOR:
George Van Tassel claimed
that over the course
of his life,
extraterrestrials communicated
with him many times.
And the most important
message he received
was to build the Integratron.
An eclectic group
of several hundred travelers
descend upon the Mojave Desert
to gather at Giant Rock.
It is here that George
Van Tassel holds his annual
Interplanetary Spacecraft
Convention.
And while there are no paved
roads or facilities of any kind,
it has attracted
enough attention
to garner a feature
in Life magazine.
So, George has the idea
he's gonna do the first
intergalactic spaceship
convention.
Couple hundred people show up.
It's a beautiful event.
Two years later,
there's 11,000 people there.
The 1950s and 1960s, uh,
Giant Rock ended up
being the nexus
of the most highly attended
UFO conferences
that has ever happened
in the United States.
NARRATOR:
The Giant Rock convention
was largely responsible
for fueling interest
in the UFO phenomenon.
But for George Van Tassel,
it served a more
important purpose.
George goes on to give
these conventions for 23 years,
collects donations,
and uses that as a way
to help fund the dome.
NARRATOR: Van Tassel
claimed that the extraterrestrials
that had communicated
with him at Giant Rock
gave him instructions
for building a machine
that could rejuvenate cells
in the human body
to extend life
perhaps indefinitely.
At the peak
of the Giant Rock Spacecraft
Convention attendance
he gets an architect
to draw up the plans
for this vision that he has,
this vision of a white dome
in the desert
that he's going to build
near Giant Rock.
And in 1958, they break ground
and they begin work.
NARRATOR: While many in the
mainstream scientific community
paid little attention
to Van Tassel's project,
some believe he was a visionary
on the level of Nikola Tesla,
who also claimed to be
in contact with alien entities.
MASTERS:
George Van Tassel was
very clearly influenced
by Nikola Tesla,
a Serbian-American researcher
known throughout the world
as a genius.
Contributed so much to science
and electricity and innovation.
VALONE:
Nikola Tesla published
an article in 1898,
and Tesla states in his article,
when you're exposed to
high voltage for a short period,
say 15 minutes or less,
you get beneficial effects.
Tesla was an inspiration
for rejuvenation,
and this is what George
Van Tassel was very attuned to.
And, in fact,
Tesla announced that he
had been receiving radio waves
from extraterrestrials,
specifically messages
from Martians.
So this is very similar
to George's experiences.
And both of them were interested
in the effect
of high voltage on humans.
NARRATOR: Both men were
derided by the scientific community
for their claims
of alien contact.
But today, it is well known
that electromagnetic waves
have a number of beneficial
effects on the human body,
including nerve regeneration,
wound healing, pain management,
and even treating diabetes.
And like Nikola Tesla,
George Van Tassel
did attract the attention
of at least
one government organization
during his lifetime the FBI.
The FBI's involvement
with George Van Tassel,
which was considerable,
started in the 1950s.
The Feds were interested
in the technology
that George was working with and
uncovering at the Integratron.
NARRATOR: Declassified
FBI documents confirm
the Bureau did, in fact,
conduct surveillance
on many of Van Tassel's speeches
and presentations for years.
ERIC RANKIN: He was
definitely monitored by the FBI.
They were aware of what
he was doing out in the desert.
If you go back into the early
'50s to the early '60s, that was
the high point around the world
of people seeing
extraterrestrial craft.
NARRATOR: During this time
of increased UFO activity
in the late 1950s
and early '60s,
Van Tassel finally had
the resources necessary
to begin constructing
the Integratron.
It is the circular plan,
two-story, hemispherical,
umbrella dome structure,
43 feet in diameter
and 33 feet tall
designed to facilitate
cell rejuvenation
by means of the manipulation
of electromagnetic waves.
INTERVIEWER:
Let's talk about this picture.
This is a picture of the, uh,
machine we're building
down there.
This structure's actually up.
We're working now on the parts
on the equipment
that operate it.
This rim around here has
armatures 57 feet in diameter,
which would be better
than four times bigger
than the biggest armatures
ever made before.
LAYNE: The incredible
thing about the construction
is there are no nails.
Every piece is fit together.
All the wood,
it's formed, it's shaped.
A little glue,
and then there's
the fiberglass shell.
NARRATOR:
Construction of the building
was completed in 1960,
but Van Tassel would manufacture
the technology to power it
himself.
Over the next two decades,
he worked on the apparatus
to achieve his goal
of cell rejuvenation
through
the controlled manipulation
of electromagnetic waves.
HODGETTS:
Because it's all built of wood,
it's unable to conduct
electricity back to the Earth,
and so there's simply
this kind of swarm
of electromagnetic energy
within the vessel
that essentially can't get out.
And so in theory, your cells,
which are also
electrical impulses within them,
may be rejuvenated and recharged
so that
their electrical component
is not fading away
as you get older.
NARRATOR: While the
Integratron was never finished,
one man who worked closely
with George Van Tassel
has managed
to build a working model
that represents the device
at 95% completion.
Is it possible
that the key to activating
the immortality machine
is still within reach?
NARRATOR:
Continuing his investigation
of the Integratron,
David Childress has arranged
to meet with Bob Benson
- Hey. I'm David Childress.
- How you doing?
NARRATOR:
A protégé of Van Tassel's,
and one of the only men alive
known to have worked directly
with him.
- You knew George Van Tassel.
- Sure did, yeah. And I got
some things
I'd like to show you.
Oh, good. I'm looking forward
to seeing it.
Yeah. All right.
NARRATOR:
In Van Tassel's final years,
Bob Benson helped him to publish
various writings
on the scientific principles
behind the Integratron.
BENSON: So I was living here,
at his house.
- CHILDRESS: At his house?
- At his house.
- Which was at the Integratron.
- Right.
And what was he like then?
Very down-to-earth,
but he was very intelligent.
He was wonderful.
NARRATOR:
While Van Tassel
never disclosed the full details
for building
his rejuvenation machine,
Benson attempted
to create a model of it
based on what he learned.
BENSON: He didn't leave
takeover instructions
for anybody,
so nobody knew what to do, so
I looked for the research,
and I couldn't find anything.
So I had to go on my own.
And what I did, I said, well,
I'll start by building a model.
I incorporated
the things that I knew.
This spoke thing you see here,
that's an actual
electrostatic generator.
It's 58 feet in diameter,
it weighs 1,500 pounds,
and it's lifted up
with air jets
that are around the bottom.
- Uh-huh.
- And there's brushes on them,
and what they do is
they generate electricity.
NARRATOR: The electricity
generated by the brushes
travels through a wire
that connects to a capacitor.
The capacitor is designed
to discharge when it reaches
a certain level of electricity.
It starts off very low,
like this.
As it goes,
it builds up to a part.
It builds up, builds up,
builds up, builds up, build up.
Builds up
Bang! And then this comes on.
This is the spark gap.
This is the regulator.
See? Boom.
Now it's regulated.
You walk through
this little door right here,
you walk around the back of it
and out the other end there.
And you're rejuvenated
instantly.
It's a rejuvenation machine,
sent by extraterrestrials
to help human beings.
CHILDRESS:
So how close
do you think
that George Van Tassel was
to completing the Integratron?
Well, he says it was 95% done.
NARRATOR: Doctor of
Engineering Physics Tom Valone
is an expert in what is called
"bioelectromagnetic healing"
and has spent years studying
both Nikola Tesla
and George Van Tassel.
Based on his research,
he believes the Integratron
was decades ahead of its time.
I would say that
the genius of George Van Tassel
is very evident in the design
of the Integratron.
He integrated
a number of technologies
that were slowly being evolved
over the 20th century.
The spark in the middle is
an actual Tesla coil,
and this is designed
by Nikola Tesla
to not only provide
for the study of high voltage,
but also biological benefits
of being exposed
to just Tesla coil frequencies.
The design we have here
is the, um,
best current knowledge
that we have
of finishing
the Integratron design.
NARRATOR: Considering
what scientists now know
about how electromagnetic
frequencies and ions
can benefit the human body,
is it possible
that George Van Tassel
really was just weeks away
from completing
a working immortality machine?
While Van Tassel
was ahead of his time,
he claimed
to be tapping into knowledge
from the ancient past.
VALONE: He constantly referred
to the Old Testament
in regards
to the references for angels
and for God
and the construction
of the Integratron.
But he was convinced from
his extraterrestrial experiences
that angels were space people.
CHILDRESS: And Van Tassel
said that the instructions
that he was given
to build the Integratron
were very similar
to the instructions
that Moses was given
by the God Yahweh
to build a tabernacle.
So Van Tassel believed
in ancient extraterrestrials
and UFOs,
and he saw all of these things
as connected.
NARRATOR: Van Tassel
was particularly intrigued
by the Great Pyramid of Giza,
which he believed
was built to utilize
the piezoelectric properties
of the quartz contained
within its granite blocks.
In the piezoelectric effect,
electrical energy accumulates
in rocks
and otherwise lifeless matter.
VALONE:
We see even in George's writings
that the pyramids were, to him,
a powerhouse made of granite,
and therefore piezoelectric
and very high energy
accumulators.
George was convinced
that the pyramid structure
was designed
to rejuvenate people.
Van Tassel had computed
that the site of the Integratron
was also in line
with the Great Pyramids
and that this area
was a rare vortex
where energies from beneath
and above the Earth
made it possible
for us to be in contact
with intelligences
that we usually weren't able
to easily reach.
NARRATOR:
Could the Great Pyramid
have once acted
as a fountain of youth
that enabled people to live
for centuries,
as is described
in both the Hebrew Bible
and the Sumerian Kings List?
If extraterrestrials really did
give George Van Tassel
instructions
for building the Integratron,
is it possible that
they were providing humankind
with a technology
that existed on Earth
thousands of years ago?
Perhaps further clues
can be found by examining
newly discovered aspects
of the Integratron
that may reveal it had a second
and perhaps
even more profound purpose.
NARRATOR:
In the year 2000,
many of George Van Tassel's
followers were dismayed
when the new owners
of the Integratron
decided to use the structure
to house sound baths.
But others believe
it brings to light
a key element
of Van Tassel's intention.
The Integratron
was made in a way
that is very ideally suited
for capturing energy
and especially sound energy.
It has
tremendous acoustic properties,
and the way
the sound moves about
and reflects off
of the domed structure
is really unique
to this building
and comes back
to the way it was constructed
and the way it was made
and the materials
that went into producing it.
HENRY:
The dome of the Integratron
enhances
the acoustic experience within.
This is very much like
ancient temple sites
like Newgrange
that are somewhat domed
and also focus
on the acoustical experience.
RANKIN:
It's a real mystery that it has
all these
beautiful sound qualities
and properties to it.
But it's interesting
to consider that all along,
maybe the Integratron's design
really was
as a sound frequency machine
more than an electrostatic
generator of some sort.
It seems odd that there would be
so many amazing
acoustical properties to it
if they weren't
supposed to be there.
Maybe it could've been both,
both sound
and using electromagnetism
in its design.
NARRATOR: Although Van
Tassel's direct work at the Integratron
ended more than 40 years ago,
its unusual architecture
continues to produce
scientific revelations.
But if the structure's acoustic
and geometric properties
serve a technological purpose,
what could it be?
RANKIN: The Integratron is
a beautiful geometric building
divided into 16 parabolic arcs
in the dome up top,
and then it's an octagon
on the bottom.
So it seems to be functions
of eights, fours, 16s.
All geometrics have a sum total
of their angles.
Well, it also means
that we are living
in a harmonic system.
HENRY:
The sacred geometry
of the Integratron
is very unique.
It is a 16-sided building.
We don't see those very often.
We did see one
in a painting by Raphael,
The Marriage of the Virgin,
where he shows a 16-sided tower
that is thought
to be Solomon's Temple.
This is very important
because Solomon's Temple
was the permanent home
of the Ark of the Covenant,
and maybe this is what
Van Tassel was hinting at
with the construction
of the Integratron.
The Ark of the Covenant
is a device
that opened up a blazing portal
through which Moses
or an Israelite high priest
could communicate
with an otherworldly being.
NARRATOR:
The Ark of the Covenant?
The sacred object
that was described in the Bible
as a device with which
to communicate with God?
Is it possible
that George Van Tassel,
who sometimes referred
to the Integratron
as the Tabernacle,
was building a machine
that would not only rejuvenate
the human body
but would use
acoustic frequencies
to connect
with otherworldly beings?
RANKIN:
It is allowing us
through our mental state,
without ever having
to make actual contact
with an extraterrestrial,
that there is some latent design
built into us,
possibly intentionally,
that we have
a little transceiver
that when we get
everything right
and we start playing these tones
according to these exact codes
and keys left behind for us,
that we might open
this portal of communication.
Perhaps this is ultimately what
Van Tassel envisioned
the Integratron doing,
was being able to open up
a portal or a gateway
so that he could communicate
with extraterrestrials
coming and going from the Earth.
NARRATOR:
If the incredible story
of George Van Tassel is true
and he was carrying out
an alien agenda,
could the Integratron be more
functional than we know?
Could it be used to reconnect
with the very beings
he claimed to be in contact with
and thereby recover the key
to completing it?
NARRATOR: More than
four decades after his death,
George Van Tassel's Integratron
still stands
in the Mojave Desert.
While the device
was never finished,
many still see it
as commemorating
a genuine
extraterrestrial encounter.
When you come
to the Mojave Desert,
there are a couple of places
you have to go.
You have to go
to Joshua Tree National Park.
Then you have to go
to the Integratron.
And people come
from around the world to see it.
The Integratron is the center,
historically, of UFO culture.
There's talk of trying
to reengineer the Integratron
at some point in the future
to have
the spinning armature outside
and generate
this electronic field.
Many scientists and physicists
and experimenters
have been going out there
for a couple of decades now,
and there definitely is
something subtly going on
energetically
at the Integratron.
It is still a frequency machine.
NARRATOR:
If extraterrestrials
really did give
Van Tassel instructions
for how to build
the Integratron,
might the same alien beings
one day choose
another human conduit
to finish the project?
Could it be that humanity
simply was not ready to possess
such powerful technology?
If so,
it would not be the first time.
Throughout history,
we have individuals
who claim to have been
mysteriously given information
that would lead
to the advancement of humankind.
In the 1400s,
Leonardo da Vinci
said that ideas
came to him during meditation.
He sketched things like
helicopters and tanks.
All sorts of devices
that couldn't be realized
in his lifetime.
In the early 20th century,
the Indian mathematician
Ramanujan
credited a Hindu god
with giving him theorems
that mystified everyone
at the time
but which now form the basis
of string theory.
And then we have Nikola Tesla,
who claimed that he was
communicating with aliens
and that he had the key
to wireless energy.
But he died before he could give
this technology to humankind.
So it may be
that in each of these cases,
we were given information
we weren't quite ready for
but that would be realized
at some future time.
HODGETTS:
I feel very confident
in the fact that this is
the work
of pure inventive genius.
And if it's not aligned
with, uh, contemporary values,
that doesn't invalidate
its genius.
But there's no question
that something,
some catalytic event,
shifted his focus
from being a
you know, a-a businessman,
an engineer,
to having this vision
for something
almost extraterrestrial.
Because of George Van Tassel's
mysterious death in 1978,
the Integratron
was never completely finished.
But it's fascinating to think
that George Van Tassel did meet
with extraterrestrials
and they showed him the future.
POPE:
Some people have speculated
that the extraterrestrial agenda
is all about a continuous
process of evolution
to improve us.
To make us more intelligent.
To civilize us, perhaps.
To bring us to a level
where perhaps, one day,
we'll be fit to take
a-a wider role
on the galactic stage.
This phenomena
that's taking place today
is as old as our history,
as our civilization.
This isn't anything new
that's occurring.
They're walking among us
on the Earth all the time,
and we don't realize it.
NARRATOR: Is it
possible that the Integratron
provides a glimpse
into humanity's future?
Was George Van Tassel chosen
to plant the seed that will
give rise to the next giant step
in humankind's evolution,
one that will lead to lifetimes
that are measured not in years
but centuries?
Perhaps the Integratron is
more functional than it appears,
and only when we are able
to activate it
will we be empowered to fulfill
our alien destiny.
NARRATOR: In the Mojave Desert,
there is a structure
built to bestow
everlasting life.
BARBARA HARRIS: People
were supposed to walk in one door
and come out the other
and be healed.
NARRATOR:
And according to the architect,
it was designed
by otherworldly beings.
He could communicate
with distant ancestors
or even time travelers
coming and going from the Earth.
DAVID CHILDRESS:
They showed him the future,
and this was his destiny.
JONATHAN BERMAN:
In your wildest imagination,
you wouldn't come up with
something like the Integratron.
The dome was taking
many different scientific ideas
and melding them together.
NARRATOR: Could this
strange domed building
really provide
the key to immortality?
GIORGIO A. TSOUKALOS: If we
could figure out the Integratron, then,
for all intents and purposes,
we could live forever.
NARRATOR:
There is a doorway
in the universe.
Beyond it is
the promise of truth.
It demands
we question everything
we have ever been taught.
The evidence is all around us.
The future is
right before our eyes.
We are not alone.
We have never been alone.
Aerodynamics engineer
and inventor George Van Tassel
is in his hotel room
preparing to reveal
his latest
scientific discoveries
in a television interview
when he suddenly
and unexpectedly dies.
Friends and family members
are shocked
when it is reported that he
suffered a fatal heart attack,
since Van Tassel,
at 67 years of age,
was in perfect health
and had shown no warning signs.
His sister, Peggy Manyo,
became suspicious
when she discovered
that the body had been cremated
before she was even notified.
And perhaps most curious of all,
his wife Doris claimed that,
during her husband's funeral,
their home was ransacked
and George's papers stolen.
As soon as he passed away,
mysterious vans and trucks
showed up,
and all of his equipment
and plans and drawings
and a lot of his writings were
loaded up into these trucks
supposedly government trucks
and hauled away,
never to be seen again.
If the government found
all this stuff important enough
to show up right after he died
and haul it away,
then at least some people
within the government believed
there was something
worth studying,
something worth looking at.
NARRATOR: But what was
George Van Tassel working on
that would elicit
so much interest
from the United States
government
and even prompt family members
to speculate
that he may have been murdered?
While Van Tassel
had been working
on a number
of intriguing projects,
including an anti-gravity device,
his masterwork
was a machine he built
in the Mojave Desert
called the Integratron.
It was a machine designed
to extend life
and perhaps even lead
to immortality.
George Van Tassel often quoted
Corinthians 15:26.
"The last enemy
to be destroyed is death."
George believed
that our lifespan is too short
and, in order to get wisdom,
we should live longer.
And that was part
of his motivation
to create this machine,
to bring wisdom to people.
'Cause just as you're getting it
together,
boom, you die.
If you could walk through
this machine counterclockwise,
come out the other side
and be 30% younger,
what more could you do
with your life?
TSOUKALOS:
It's in the middle of nowhere.
It's incredibly flat.
And there you see
this white, round building
with a half dome on top,
and it's got these 16 sections.
MICHAEL MASTERS: The Integratron
was made in a way that
is very ideally suited
for capturing energy
and the way George Van Tassel
thought of the Integratron
as a battery charger,
a way to prolong life.
TSOUKALOS: The basic
idea behind the Integratron
was to introduce a machine,
through harmonics,
with which you
then can rejuvenate your cells.
Because
if we could figure out a way
from preventing
our individual cells
from deteriorating
or getting older,
then, for all intents
and purposes,
we could live forever.
NARRATOR:
At the time of his death,
George Van Tassel
had just announced
that the device he had
been working on for 24 years
was 95% complete
and would be fully functional
within weeks.
When his house was ransacked
during his funeral,
the core of the Integratron
and other critical components
also disappeared,
leaving no question as to what
the intruders were after.
Those papers and that equipment,
none of that
has ever been seen again.
NARRATOR:
Could this unusual structure
located in the middle
of the Mojave Desert
really hold the key
to immortality?
While it may sound far fetched,
many who have studied
the incredible story
of George Van Tassel
are convinced
that he might actually have
succeeded
in a quest for eternal life
that has endured
for thousands of years.
BERMAN: We took a bite out of
that apple in the Garden of Eden.
We had knowledge.
But the price of that knowledge
was that we were aware
of our own mortality.
And since that day,
we've been looking
for that fountain of youth,
that way to extend our lifespan
or maybe even live forever.
NARRATOR:
In 2018,
archaeologists
excavating the tomb
of a Han dynasty noble family
in Luoyang, China,
unearthed some of
the earliest evidence ever found
of human efforts to cheat death.
Recently, in an archaeological
dig in a Chinese burial chamber,
an ancient 2,000-year-old
bronze pot was recovered
with the remnants of a substance
that was later determined
was probably an elixir
of immortality.
NARRATOR:
Ancient Taoist texts confirmed
the liquid substance
to be a legendary potion
brewed by Chinese alchemists,
granting eternal youth
to those who dared drink it.
Lab results revealed
the potion is largely made up
of potassium nitrate
and alunite,
which, while not poisonous,
are used in pesticides,
fertilizers
and rocket propellants.
FISHER:
It's a powerful reminder
of the fact that humans,
probably for thousands of years,
have had this sort of desire
to-to extend our lives.
NARRATOR:
The Han dynasty elixir
is just the latest of many
ancient attempts at immortality
discovered by archaeologists
over the years.
But what drives humankind
to seek eternal life?
Is it merely self-preservation?
Or could there be
another force at work,
one that may be connected
to the fact
that every ancient culture
on Earth
described the gods as immortal?
In ancient Greek myths,
we learn of the food
of the gods,
which they called ambrosia,
an immortality food.
These beings possess some form
of a-a liquid or an elixir
that, ultimately,
somehow altered their blood
and promoted immortality.
TSOUKALOS:
Some of the stories that we hear
about this drink, ambrosia,
is when the eyewitness
is taken up into the sky.
There are actual
ancient Greek mythologies
that describe
these shiny star islands
that descended from the sky
and then,
under their own propulsion,
moved around.
The entire Greek pantheon
of gods
is based
on visiting extraterrestrials.
NARRATOR:
Is it possible
that humanity's centuries-old
quest to attain eternal life
is fueled by a desire to become
like the otherworldly beings
that our ancestors
actually encountered?
Curiously, there are a number of
stories from the ancient world
presented not as fiction
but as historical record
that describe people
of an earlier age
living
extraordinarily long lives.
In the Old Testament,
the Book of Genesis,
we learn of figures
like Noah and Methuselah
who lived for hundreds of years,
800 and 900 years.
The Bible never tells us
how they were able
to live that long.
TSOUKALOS:
There is an artifact
at the Ashmolean Museum
in Oxford, England,
that is called
the WB 44 Kings List
of ancient Sumeria.
On there,
you have a chronology of kings,
and the combined years
of when these rulers
were in charge
is 241,000 years.
And on that WB 44 list,
you have
so-called historical figures,
where you actually have
archaeology
corroborating existence
of those people.
So, in my opinion,
the WB 44 list
is a list of extraterrestrial
space travelers,
and the entire Kings List
is correct.
NARRATOR: Could it
be that George Van Tassel
and many others like him
have been driven
by a deep-seated memory
of a time
when our ancestors existed
alongside extraterrestrials
who seemed to live forever?
Perhaps the answer can be found
by examining the events
that led to the construction
of the Integratron
and George Van Tassel's
alien encounter.
NARRATOR: Standing alone
in California's
barren Mojave Desert
is a towering seven-story
boulder called Giant Rock.
It is here that George
Van Tassel's strange journey
began in the 1940s,
just three miles
from where he would
eventually build
the Integratron.
MASTERS: Giant Rock
is a 25,000-ton boulder
that takes up 5,800 square feet,
and is, until recently,
the largest freestanding boulder
in the world.
NARRATOR:
This massive boulder has
long been held sacred
by local Native American tribes,
who believe it to be
a site of great power.
HENRY: Spiritual vortexes
like Giant Rock are known
to be places
where people can have
extraordinary
spiritual experiences,
healing experiences,
deep states of meditation.
And what we find out
at Giant Rock is that the local
Native American Indian tribes,
the Serrano and the Chemehuevi,
would do their ceremonies
at Giant Rock.
But only the chief was allowed
to get close to Giant Rock.
NARRATOR:
In November of 2019,
ancient astronaut theorist
David Childress traveled
to the site of Giant Rock
to meet with local historian
Barbara Harris, and learn
more about the inception
of the Integratron.
- Hello, Barbara.
- How you doing?
Hi. Thank you for coming.
Thanks for having me here.
So, please tell me
the story of-of Giant Rock.
Well, they say it is
millions of years old.
And, uh, basically this whole
area here is made up of granite.
And, many, many years
ago there's a,
a volcanic eruption.
And, of course,
this is a product
of that volcanic eruption.
What is the early story
of, of Giant Rock, then,
with Native Americans?
Well, this ground was considered
very sacred
by the Native Americans.
And they would come here
and use it seasonally.
But they considered it
so sacred that only
the shamans and the chiefs
were allowed to stay
here at the rock.
At the turn of the 19th century,
the homesteading and
the white man
started to come in.
And that has to do with this
early prospector,
who lived under the rock.
Frank Critzer,
and he was responsible
for building the roads
to Giant Rock.
NARRATOR:
In 1930, George Van Tassel
had a chance encounter
with prospector Frank Critzer
at his uncle's auto repair
shop in Santa Monica,
which led to him investing
in Critzer's mining operations
in the Mojave Desert.
Critzer was known in the area
for his eccentric behavior,
which included using mining
dynamite to blow a hole
in the bottom of Giant Rock
one big enough to live in.
Van Tassel's initial ties
to the area stem
from a friendship forged
with Critzer over the years.
CHILDRESS:
He lived under this rock?
HARRIS:
Yes, he was actually
a guy who was looking for people
to come and visit him
under his rock.
However, Frank, he also
had a dark side to him.
So, in July of 1942,
the U. S. Government
had the Old Man's Draft.
And, and it required people
between the ages of 18 and 64
to register for the draft.
And so he got caught up
in that, did he?
- Yeah, he was 54.
- Okay.
And the-the local sheriffs
came out here, who happened
to be friends with him,
and offered to take him
into the local town
to register for the draft.
He walked into a back room
and came out
wearing a pair of binoculars
that had wires attached.
And he basically said,
"Leave me alone,
or we're all gonna
go to hell together."
And he took the two wires,
put them together and
- Right under here, then?
- Yes.
Okay, wow!
And he blew up
into little pieces.
And, uh, one sheriff actually,
one of his rib cages
came off and impaled into a
the other one.
-And the other sheriff
came flying -Wow.
- Out of the bottom of the rock.
- Yeah.
And the other sheriff,
who stood out here,
stood in shock
while it all happened.
NARRATOR:
Frank Critzer's bizarre
and violent action
shocked the local community.
Many questioned if he may
have been influenced
by the energy
of Giant Rock itself
which the local
Native American tribes
had warned was only meant
for sacred purposes.
And, according to geologists,
Giant Rock does,
in fact, produce energy.
The interior
of the rock is white,
because it is primarily
composed of quartz
a mineral that generates
an electrical charge
when under stress
as it would be
inside a massively heavy rock.
Giant Rock is also believed
to be located on top
of a natural earth energy line,
also known as a ley line.
George Van Tassel said
the Integratron needed
to be in a special place,
full of energy.
We have a gold mine
right nearby.
This area has ley lines
and aquafers.
There's actually a mountain
of quartz right here.
And you can feel the energy
when you're here.
NARRATOR:
Could electrical energy
emanating from Giant Rock
have had
a deadly effect
on Frank Critzer?
Despite the horrific event
that occurred at Giant Rock,
one man was still
drawn to the site
George Van Tassel.
Over the course of his many
visits to Critzer's rock home,
he had become convinced that it
was a place of unusual energy.
Now, you have a vacancy
under the rock!
- Van Tassel told his wife, "Pack the girls"
- Santa Monica to
"we're moving out to live
under a rock!"
So, did the Van Tassels
- live underneath this rock then?
- No, actually,
most of their living quarters
were outside.
The underground area
was primarily used
for his channeling
and meditations, so,
as the story goes,
Van Tassel had an experience.
NARRATOR:
Before his death,
Frank Critzer had transformed
the nearby ancient lake bed
into a small airport.
According to George Van Tassel,
on the night of August 24, 1953,
a craft landed on the runway
that was not of this world.
He described the encounter
in a 1964 television interview.
INTERVIEWER:
What did you see?
A bell, a bell-shaped, uh, type
of, uh, anti-gravity, uh, ship
that they operate
as a scout ship
out of their big carriers.
How big?
Uh, this was 36 feet in diameter
and 19 feet high.
And where was it, on the ground?
No, it was hovering
ten feet off the ground.
And, uh, a man got off
of the ship
and approached me.
INTERVIEWER:
Did you go into this ship?
I walked with him to a spot
underneath it,
and, uh, an anti-gravity beam
took me up
through a hole in the bottom.
NARRATOR:
While skeptics were quick
to write off George Van Tassel
as some kind of delusional
mad scientist,
many who knew him,
or have studied his work,
believe he was
nothing short of a genius.
George was super smart.
At 14, he drops out of school.
At 17, he becomes
a certified pilot.
Moves out west,
and worked for Howard Hughes
and then became friends.
They both had a calling
to, let's say, higher
or mystical
or psychic experiences.
CRAIG HODGETTS:
The parallels would be Edison,
who thought in this
realm of electricity
that nobody could understand,
but he somehow channeled.
Or Nikola Tesla.
He was so sensitized to
the electromagnetic spectrum
that many of his inventions
just came naturally.
And that may have been
some place where
George Van Tassel came from.
NARRATOR:
George Van Tassel claimed
that over the course
of his life,
extraterrestrials communicated
with him many times.
And the most important
message he received
was to build the Integratron.
An eclectic group
of several hundred travelers
descend upon the Mojave Desert
to gather at Giant Rock.
It is here that George
Van Tassel holds his annual
Interplanetary Spacecraft
Convention.
And while there are no paved
roads or facilities of any kind,
it has attracted
enough attention
to garner a feature
in Life magazine.
So, George has the idea
he's gonna do the first
intergalactic spaceship
convention.
Couple hundred people show up.
It's a beautiful event.
Two years later,
there's 11,000 people there.
The 1950s and 1960s, uh,
Giant Rock ended up
being the nexus
of the most highly attended
UFO conferences
that has ever happened
in the United States.
NARRATOR:
The Giant Rock convention
was largely responsible
for fueling interest
in the UFO phenomenon.
But for George Van Tassel,
it served a more
important purpose.
George goes on to give
these conventions for 23 years,
collects donations,
and uses that as a way
to help fund the dome.
NARRATOR: Van Tassel
claimed that the extraterrestrials
that had communicated
with him at Giant Rock
gave him instructions
for building a machine
that could rejuvenate cells
in the human body
to extend life
perhaps indefinitely.
At the peak
of the Giant Rock Spacecraft
Convention attendance
he gets an architect
to draw up the plans
for this vision that he has,
this vision of a white dome
in the desert
that he's going to build
near Giant Rock.
And in 1958, they break ground
and they begin work.
NARRATOR: While many in the
mainstream scientific community
paid little attention
to Van Tassel's project,
some believe he was a visionary
on the level of Nikola Tesla,
who also claimed to be
in contact with alien entities.
MASTERS:
George Van Tassel was
very clearly influenced
by Nikola Tesla,
a Serbian-American researcher
known throughout the world
as a genius.
Contributed so much to science
and electricity and innovation.
VALONE:
Nikola Tesla published
an article in 1898,
and Tesla states in his article,
when you're exposed to
high voltage for a short period,
say 15 minutes or less,
you get beneficial effects.
Tesla was an inspiration
for rejuvenation,
and this is what George
Van Tassel was very attuned to.
And, in fact,
Tesla announced that he
had been receiving radio waves
from extraterrestrials,
specifically messages
from Martians.
So this is very similar
to George's experiences.
And both of them were interested
in the effect
of high voltage on humans.
NARRATOR: Both men were
derided by the scientific community
for their claims
of alien contact.
But today, it is well known
that electromagnetic waves
have a number of beneficial
effects on the human body,
including nerve regeneration,
wound healing, pain management,
and even treating diabetes.
And like Nikola Tesla,
George Van Tassel
did attract the attention
of at least
one government organization
during his lifetime the FBI.
The FBI's involvement
with George Van Tassel,
which was considerable,
started in the 1950s.
The Feds were interested
in the technology
that George was working with and
uncovering at the Integratron.
NARRATOR: Declassified
FBI documents confirm
the Bureau did, in fact,
conduct surveillance
on many of Van Tassel's speeches
and presentations for years.
ERIC RANKIN: He was
definitely monitored by the FBI.
They were aware of what
he was doing out in the desert.
If you go back into the early
'50s to the early '60s, that was
the high point around the world
of people seeing
extraterrestrial craft.
NARRATOR: During this time
of increased UFO activity
in the late 1950s
and early '60s,
Van Tassel finally had
the resources necessary
to begin constructing
the Integratron.
It is the circular plan,
two-story, hemispherical,
umbrella dome structure,
43 feet in diameter
and 33 feet tall
designed to facilitate
cell rejuvenation
by means of the manipulation
of electromagnetic waves.
INTERVIEWER:
Let's talk about this picture.
This is a picture of the, uh,
machine we're building
down there.
This structure's actually up.
We're working now on the parts
on the equipment
that operate it.
This rim around here has
armatures 57 feet in diameter,
which would be better
than four times bigger
than the biggest armatures
ever made before.
LAYNE: The incredible
thing about the construction
is there are no nails.
Every piece is fit together.
All the wood,
it's formed, it's shaped.
A little glue,
and then there's
the fiberglass shell.
NARRATOR:
Construction of the building
was completed in 1960,
but Van Tassel would manufacture
the technology to power it
himself.
Over the next two decades,
he worked on the apparatus
to achieve his goal
of cell rejuvenation
through
the controlled manipulation
of electromagnetic waves.
HODGETTS:
Because it's all built of wood,
it's unable to conduct
electricity back to the Earth,
and so there's simply
this kind of swarm
of electromagnetic energy
within the vessel
that essentially can't get out.
And so in theory, your cells,
which are also
electrical impulses within them,
may be rejuvenated and recharged
so that
their electrical component
is not fading away
as you get older.
NARRATOR: While the
Integratron was never finished,
one man who worked closely
with George Van Tassel
has managed
to build a working model
that represents the device
at 95% completion.
Is it possible
that the key to activating
the immortality machine
is still within reach?
NARRATOR:
Continuing his investigation
of the Integratron,
David Childress has arranged
to meet with Bob Benson
- Hey. I'm David Childress.
- How you doing?
NARRATOR:
A protégé of Van Tassel's,
and one of the only men alive
known to have worked directly
with him.
- You knew George Van Tassel.
- Sure did, yeah. And I got
some things
I'd like to show you.
Oh, good. I'm looking forward
to seeing it.
Yeah. All right.
NARRATOR:
In Van Tassel's final years,
Bob Benson helped him to publish
various writings
on the scientific principles
behind the Integratron.
BENSON: So I was living here,
at his house.
- CHILDRESS: At his house?
- At his house.
- Which was at the Integratron.
- Right.
And what was he like then?
Very down-to-earth,
but he was very intelligent.
He was wonderful.
NARRATOR:
While Van Tassel
never disclosed the full details
for building
his rejuvenation machine,
Benson attempted
to create a model of it
based on what he learned.
BENSON: He didn't leave
takeover instructions
for anybody,
so nobody knew what to do, so
I looked for the research,
and I couldn't find anything.
So I had to go on my own.
And what I did, I said, well,
I'll start by building a model.
I incorporated
the things that I knew.
This spoke thing you see here,
that's an actual
electrostatic generator.
It's 58 feet in diameter,
it weighs 1,500 pounds,
and it's lifted up
with air jets
that are around the bottom.
- Uh-huh.
- And there's brushes on them,
and what they do is
they generate electricity.
NARRATOR: The electricity
generated by the brushes
travels through a wire
that connects to a capacitor.
The capacitor is designed
to discharge when it reaches
a certain level of electricity.
It starts off very low,
like this.
As it goes,
it builds up to a part.
It builds up, builds up,
builds up, builds up, build up.
Builds up
Bang! And then this comes on.
This is the spark gap.
This is the regulator.
See? Boom.
Now it's regulated.
You walk through
this little door right here,
you walk around the back of it
and out the other end there.
And you're rejuvenated
instantly.
It's a rejuvenation machine,
sent by extraterrestrials
to help human beings.
CHILDRESS:
So how close
do you think
that George Van Tassel was
to completing the Integratron?
Well, he says it was 95% done.
NARRATOR: Doctor of
Engineering Physics Tom Valone
is an expert in what is called
"bioelectromagnetic healing"
and has spent years studying
both Nikola Tesla
and George Van Tassel.
Based on his research,
he believes the Integratron
was decades ahead of its time.
I would say that
the genius of George Van Tassel
is very evident in the design
of the Integratron.
He integrated
a number of technologies
that were slowly being evolved
over the 20th century.
The spark in the middle is
an actual Tesla coil,
and this is designed
by Nikola Tesla
to not only provide
for the study of high voltage,
but also biological benefits
of being exposed
to just Tesla coil frequencies.
The design we have here
is the, um,
best current knowledge
that we have
of finishing
the Integratron design.
NARRATOR: Considering
what scientists now know
about how electromagnetic
frequencies and ions
can benefit the human body,
is it possible
that George Van Tassel
really was just weeks away
from completing
a working immortality machine?
While Van Tassel
was ahead of his time,
he claimed
to be tapping into knowledge
from the ancient past.
VALONE: He constantly referred
to the Old Testament
in regards
to the references for angels
and for God
and the construction
of the Integratron.
But he was convinced from
his extraterrestrial experiences
that angels were space people.
CHILDRESS: And Van Tassel
said that the instructions
that he was given
to build the Integratron
were very similar
to the instructions
that Moses was given
by the God Yahweh
to build a tabernacle.
So Van Tassel believed
in ancient extraterrestrials
and UFOs,
and he saw all of these things
as connected.
NARRATOR: Van Tassel
was particularly intrigued
by the Great Pyramid of Giza,
which he believed
was built to utilize
the piezoelectric properties
of the quartz contained
within its granite blocks.
In the piezoelectric effect,
electrical energy accumulates
in rocks
and otherwise lifeless matter.
VALONE:
We see even in George's writings
that the pyramids were, to him,
a powerhouse made of granite,
and therefore piezoelectric
and very high energy
accumulators.
George was convinced
that the pyramid structure
was designed
to rejuvenate people.
Van Tassel had computed
that the site of the Integratron
was also in line
with the Great Pyramids
and that this area
was a rare vortex
where energies from beneath
and above the Earth
made it possible
for us to be in contact
with intelligences
that we usually weren't able
to easily reach.
NARRATOR:
Could the Great Pyramid
have once acted
as a fountain of youth
that enabled people to live
for centuries,
as is described
in both the Hebrew Bible
and the Sumerian Kings List?
If extraterrestrials really did
give George Van Tassel
instructions
for building the Integratron,
is it possible that
they were providing humankind
with a technology
that existed on Earth
thousands of years ago?
Perhaps further clues
can be found by examining
newly discovered aspects
of the Integratron
that may reveal it had a second
and perhaps
even more profound purpose.
NARRATOR:
In the year 2000,
many of George Van Tassel's
followers were dismayed
when the new owners
of the Integratron
decided to use the structure
to house sound baths.
But others believe
it brings to light
a key element
of Van Tassel's intention.
The Integratron
was made in a way
that is very ideally suited
for capturing energy
and especially sound energy.
It has
tremendous acoustic properties,
and the way
the sound moves about
and reflects off
of the domed structure
is really unique
to this building
and comes back
to the way it was constructed
and the way it was made
and the materials
that went into producing it.
HENRY:
The dome of the Integratron
enhances
the acoustic experience within.
This is very much like
ancient temple sites
like Newgrange
that are somewhat domed
and also focus
on the acoustical experience.
RANKIN:
It's a real mystery that it has
all these
beautiful sound qualities
and properties to it.
But it's interesting
to consider that all along,
maybe the Integratron's design
really was
as a sound frequency machine
more than an electrostatic
generator of some sort.
It seems odd that there would be
so many amazing
acoustical properties to it
if they weren't
supposed to be there.
Maybe it could've been both,
both sound
and using electromagnetism
in its design.
NARRATOR: Although Van
Tassel's direct work at the Integratron
ended more than 40 years ago,
its unusual architecture
continues to produce
scientific revelations.
But if the structure's acoustic
and geometric properties
serve a technological purpose,
what could it be?
RANKIN: The Integratron is
a beautiful geometric building
divided into 16 parabolic arcs
in the dome up top,
and then it's an octagon
on the bottom.
So it seems to be functions
of eights, fours, 16s.
All geometrics have a sum total
of their angles.
Well, it also means
that we are living
in a harmonic system.
HENRY:
The sacred geometry
of the Integratron
is very unique.
It is a 16-sided building.
We don't see those very often.
We did see one
in a painting by Raphael,
The Marriage of the Virgin,
where he shows a 16-sided tower
that is thought
to be Solomon's Temple.
This is very important
because Solomon's Temple
was the permanent home
of the Ark of the Covenant,
and maybe this is what
Van Tassel was hinting at
with the construction
of the Integratron.
The Ark of the Covenant
is a device
that opened up a blazing portal
through which Moses
or an Israelite high priest
could communicate
with an otherworldly being.
NARRATOR:
The Ark of the Covenant?
The sacred object
that was described in the Bible
as a device with which
to communicate with God?
Is it possible
that George Van Tassel,
who sometimes referred
to the Integratron
as the Tabernacle,
was building a machine
that would not only rejuvenate
the human body
but would use
acoustic frequencies
to connect
with otherworldly beings?
RANKIN:
It is allowing us
through our mental state,
without ever having
to make actual contact
with an extraterrestrial,
that there is some latent design
built into us,
possibly intentionally,
that we have
a little transceiver
that when we get
everything right
and we start playing these tones
according to these exact codes
and keys left behind for us,
that we might open
this portal of communication.
Perhaps this is ultimately what
Van Tassel envisioned
the Integratron doing,
was being able to open up
a portal or a gateway
so that he could communicate
with extraterrestrials
coming and going from the Earth.
NARRATOR:
If the incredible story
of George Van Tassel is true
and he was carrying out
an alien agenda,
could the Integratron be more
functional than we know?
Could it be used to reconnect
with the very beings
he claimed to be in contact with
and thereby recover the key
to completing it?
NARRATOR: More than
four decades after his death,
George Van Tassel's Integratron
still stands
in the Mojave Desert.
While the device
was never finished,
many still see it
as commemorating
a genuine
extraterrestrial encounter.
When you come
to the Mojave Desert,
there are a couple of places
you have to go.
You have to go
to Joshua Tree National Park.
Then you have to go
to the Integratron.
And people come
from around the world to see it.
The Integratron is the center,
historically, of UFO culture.
There's talk of trying
to reengineer the Integratron
at some point in the future
to have
the spinning armature outside
and generate
this electronic field.
Many scientists and physicists
and experimenters
have been going out there
for a couple of decades now,
and there definitely is
something subtly going on
energetically
at the Integratron.
It is still a frequency machine.
NARRATOR:
If extraterrestrials
really did give
Van Tassel instructions
for how to build
the Integratron,
might the same alien beings
one day choose
another human conduit
to finish the project?
Could it be that humanity
simply was not ready to possess
such powerful technology?
If so,
it would not be the first time.
Throughout history,
we have individuals
who claim to have been
mysteriously given information
that would lead
to the advancement of humankind.
In the 1400s,
Leonardo da Vinci
said that ideas
came to him during meditation.
He sketched things like
helicopters and tanks.
All sorts of devices
that couldn't be realized
in his lifetime.
In the early 20th century,
the Indian mathematician
Ramanujan
credited a Hindu god
with giving him theorems
that mystified everyone
at the time
but which now form the basis
of string theory.
And then we have Nikola Tesla,
who claimed that he was
communicating with aliens
and that he had the key
to wireless energy.
But he died before he could give
this technology to humankind.
So it may be
that in each of these cases,
we were given information
we weren't quite ready for
but that would be realized
at some future time.
HODGETTS:
I feel very confident
in the fact that this is
the work
of pure inventive genius.
And if it's not aligned
with, uh, contemporary values,
that doesn't invalidate
its genius.
But there's no question
that something,
some catalytic event,
shifted his focus
from being a
you know, a-a businessman,
an engineer,
to having this vision
for something
almost extraterrestrial.
Because of George Van Tassel's
mysterious death in 1978,
the Integratron
was never completely finished.
But it's fascinating to think
that George Van Tassel did meet
with extraterrestrials
and they showed him the future.
POPE:
Some people have speculated
that the extraterrestrial agenda
is all about a continuous
process of evolution
to improve us.
To make us more intelligent.
To civilize us, perhaps.
To bring us to a level
where perhaps, one day,
we'll be fit to take
a-a wider role
on the galactic stage.
This phenomena
that's taking place today
is as old as our history,
as our civilization.
This isn't anything new
that's occurring.
They're walking among us
on the Earth all the time,
and we don't realize it.
NARRATOR: Is it
possible that the Integratron
provides a glimpse
into humanity's future?
Was George Van Tassel chosen
to plant the seed that will
give rise to the next giant step
in humankind's evolution,
one that will lead to lifetimes
that are measured not in years
but centuries?
Perhaps the Integratron is
more functional than it appears,
and only when we are able
to activate it
will we be empowered to fulfill
our alien destiny.